Deborah Bloomfield

Humans love a spot of pareidolia, our ability to see faces in things that do not have faces. But the Sun is definitely looking like a face, these days, right? Like, it’s got a big scary mouth, a large right eye, and it is definitely looking to its left. We are certain that even our […]

On July 1, humanity became aware of comet 3I/ATLAS. This is only the third interstellar object known to us, even though, statistically, many thousands are flying through the Solar System as we speak; we have only been able to catch three in the act over a number of years. Today is a special day for […]

In 2017, an absolute unit of an iceberg calved from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica’s Western Weddell Sea. It provided unprecedented access to this remote region that was a key search area in the hunt for Shackleton’s lost ship, Endurance. When scientists sent a remote-operated vehicle to investigate in 2019, they were hoping […]

For optimum health benefits, the general advice is to aim for five servings of fruit and vegetables per day. That’s the advice from governments and scientists alike – but let’s face it: sometimes, it’s hard to get ‘em all in. For some, smoothies are the solution. They’re a great way to slam down some nutrients […]

Ever walked past a spider’s web and noticed it’s got zigzags woven through it? Congratulations! You have observed stabilimenta, a kind of “extra touch” that spiders weave into their webs that’s made out of silk. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Thing […]

In 2023, scientists captured fish at depths exceeding 8 kilometers (4.8 miles) and recorded them even deeper. These findings not only set new records for deep-sea fish, but also suggest we may be nearing the maximum depths at which fish can exist. At the western edge of the Pacific Ocean lies a series of trenches […]

Shush! The era of quiet supersonic air travel is upon us. After years of development and setbacks, aeronautical engineers in the US flew the X-59, a “revolutionary” experimental aircraft designed to perform supersonic flight not with a sonic boom, but a hushed thump. X-59 successfully completed its first flight at sunrise on Tuesday, October 28, 2025. […]

Around 6 million years ago, tiny bubbles of air became trapped inside ice in Antarctica and have remained sealed ever since, quietly preserving clues to Earth’s ancient atmosphere like a prehistoric time capsule. An international team of scientists has studied ice core cylinders gathered from the Allan Hills region of East Antarctica. Dating back 6 […]

Reproduction in the animal world can be complicated at the best of times. But far from the flashy birds or mammals competing for mates, a new study has revealed that, in the case of some flatworms, they turn to asexual reproduction with some surprising results. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]

When given the opportunity to name something, best believe humanity is going to take that chance to be as amusing as possible. We named a polar research ship “Boaty McBoatface”, after all. With that same energy, people have now officially given new names to a group of North Atlantic right whales, and there’s some absolute […]

“I’m allergic to other people” sounds rather like the kind of thing you’d find printed on a novelty tee – but for some people out there, it’s an all-too-real diagnosis.  “You can be allergic to pretty much anything,” one doctor told Vice back in 2015. And yes: that includes humans – or at least enough […]

England’s capital city of London is a place of wonder, but head below the streets to the underground Tube stations and things get a bit, well, grim. It’s loud, crowded, and always seems to smell of burnt hair, and yet a host of curious creatures have made a home in those long and winding tubes […]

Due to the audio medium of radio, we tend to associate radio waves with sound, but they are a type of light. Just like we can see different colors due to different wavelengths of visible light, we can also treat different wavelengths or frequencies of radio waves as different colors. Astronomers have now used that […]

The surge in true crime’s popularity suggests something slightly uncomfortable about our media habits: many of us – this writer included – now casually unwind to real-life stories of murder, deception, and forensic investigation. But as public appetite grows, so does criticism, and it raises an uneasy question for fans: what exactly are we getting […]

The world still has at least 196 uncontacted Indigenous groups – but every one of them faces existential threats in what some have called a “moment of legislated genocide.” Mining, logging, and fossil fuel drilling are the big ones, but a new report warns of a rising threat: fame-seeking “content creators” and other outsiders attempting […]

In 2024, wildlife photographer Gaurav Ramnarayanan had a very unexpected encounter with one of the rarest big cats in the world. While exploring Kaziranga National Park in India, he saw a tiger that didn’t look like any he had seen before, with strawberry-blonde fur and large tufts of white. It was a golden tiger, one […]

Prehistoric human babies probably looked just like their parents from the moment they were born. Not only would this have come as something of a relief to new parents back in the Pleistocene, but it’s also highly useful information for modern anthropologists, as it provides new insights into the development of facial morphology in early […]

An international team of astronomers has shown for the first time that it is possible to map exoplanets using a technique called 3D eclipse mapping or spectroscopic eclipse mapping. By measuring the emission of specific wavelengths of light on a giant and very hot exoplanet, the team was able to work out the atmospheric variation […]

After years of exploitation and struggle, Bangladesh is giving its elephants a second chance. A new government project aims to free the country’s captive giants, once forced into circuses, tourist rides, or back-breaking labor, and return them to the wild. Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) once roamed widely across southern Asia, through the forests of the […]

There’s a flower that blooms in the forests of Indonesia that’s infamous for the smell it produces. It’s a rare event that it releases its stench, but when it does, a bouquet of “rotting fish, very smelly socks[…] like a food bin that’s overflowing” is released into the air – so says Glasshouse Horticulturist at […]